


To See Around Corners

by Siria



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Challenge: hpgenficathon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-14
Updated: 2006-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kingsley's mother always said that he had a touch of the seer about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To See Around Corners

**Author's Note:**

> Written for vytresna for the Second Harry Potter Gen Ficathon, in response to the prompt "Kingsley Shacklebolt chafes at Fudge's rule."

Kingsley's mother always said that he had a touch of the seer about him. His Divination teacher in school never noticed any special skill clinging to him, and said that he could no more read the future in the tea leaves than he could in the leaves of the trees outside (a peculiarly foolish analogy to make when on the grounds of Hogwarts) but his mother swore by it all the same.

"It runs in the family, boy; my mother and her father and his aunt," she would say, bustling around the kitchen as she took care of the mountains of washing and cooking and ironing and potion brewing that always seemed to pile up higher than high, though it was only the three of them now. "It's why we knew to get out when we did, why we came to England when you were still fretful and kicking in my belly. Like an itch under my skin, it was, like a little white worm wriggling about saying 'Jenny, you get yourself out now; trouble's coming.' So I got myself out, got us all out, and came here, just before everything went just as wrong as it could. You trust that itch, boy, if you ever feel it. It'll help you."

It was always around here in the story that she'd pause and look up from whatever she was doing, and flash Kingsley a white and confidential smile. "Of course, then we got here, and we only had a few years of peace before it all went to hell again, with You Know Who, and fools in governments, and some of the most dismal weather it's ever been my certain misfortune to see. That's the trouble with our Sight, boy' it can help you see a little further and a little better than most, but it's still not going to let you see around corners."

Kingsley scraped through his OWL exam in Divination with a mark of 'Acceptable', and proceeded to rapidly forget much of what his professor had taught him. He focused instead on Defence Against the Dark Arts and Potions and the other subjects required for training as an Auror with the kind of single-minded intensity that made his teachers fond and his fellow students envious. He'd passed his NEWTs with marks that had made Dumbledore beam at him, and been one of the very best Auror apprentices of his year. It wasn't a career which allowed much time for the pursuit of subjects like Divination' the Ministry employed other people for that, and nowadays the job of an Auror was to act, not to think or reflect.

Still, every now and then, Kingsley was reminded of what his mother had told him. He would feel that telltale prickle on the back of his neck, or a flutter in his chest like the heartbeat of an anxious child. He would hang back for just a moment, long enough for a blast of green light to waste itself harmlessly on the wall opposite, or to catch that one crucial glimpse of a suspect. It didn't happen often, but always when it was something important, and Kingsley had come to trust it in the same way he trusted his lungs to fill and his legs to carry him and his wand to serve him.

Which was why, when Fudge called him to his office, and that itch started up at the back of his eyes, Kingsley straightened his spine and composed his face and made himself look inconspicuous and unimportant in that way which only men who stand well over six feet can manage. If you know that something's coming, his mother had always said, it's always best to be prepared to deflect it from the beginning.

Fudge was sitting at his desk when Kingsley walked into a room, letters stacked in dizzying piles on his desk, dozens more dancing around his head and shrieking for his attention. There were, Kingsley noted with something like vague amusement, more than a few Howlers among them. One or two of them were even the large, red and black kind of Howler that were many times as loud, rude, and effective as the regular kind, and which had to be imported from South America at fantastic cost for those times when the expense was really worth it. Someone, clearly, was not best pleased with the Minister. The man looked harassed and grey faced, his face stripped clean of his usual bright and bureaucratic smile, and a faintly dazed look hanging around his eyes and the soft corners of his mouth.

"Ah, Shacklebolt," the minister said when he looked up. "Auror Shacklebolt," he corrected himself, when Kingsley raised an impressive eyebrow and folded an even more impressive set of arms. "Just the man I wanted to see."

Kingsley generally had nothing to say when someone stated the obvious, and he had nothing to say now. He didn't say anything, and he waited.

"I daresay you've been hearing about some of the little upsets which have happened lately," Fudge said, settling himself back into his seat. "Those blighters at the _Prophet_ have been doing their best to blow what is certainly an unfortunate incident out of all proportion, make it all seem like much worse than it really was."

Kingsley, who, like any Auror worth their salt, got his news from sources many times more reliable than the _Prophet_, was certain that the unfortunate incident could be classed as something slightly more than 'a little upset'. He shifted his weight to his other leg, and waited in silence for the other man to continue.

"Dumbledore, of course, hasn't been helping matters. First believing that Potter child, and then telling every student in the school that You-Know-Who—" Fudge shifted a little in his seat. "Well, none of it's encouraging a proper level of wizarding pride and morale, and it's certainly not making people confident in the Ministry. That's the kind of thing that's dangerous, Shacklebolt. It's not reassuring. It's _unnerving_ people. It certainly doesn't fit in with the image of the Ministry which we are trying to promote, nowadays." One of the Howlers made a renewed attempt to gain the Minister's attention, and he slapped it irritably out of the air.

"That is where you come in, of course," he continued. "You've acquired something of a reputation among your fellow Aurors for efficiency at your job."

A polite way of putting it, Kingsley thought' especially since the yearly staff review reports which Fudge now insisted that the Head Aurors write up tended to refer to him more as 'methodical' and 'ruthless.'

"Yes," Kingsley said slowly, in a tone of voice which managed to make it not quite a question and not quite a statement.

"Obviously," Fudge said, "If we are to regain public confidence, we're going to have to show the average witch and wizard that we're on top of things, that we're fully capable of clearing up the other little problems that have cropped up regrettably of late."

"Little problems?"

"Sirius Black," Fudge replied. "He's been on the loose for too long now. It was never safe, having a lunatic like that running around. But with all the rumours floating around at present, and that Potter boy talking nonsense—well, even the Muggle Prime Minister is starting to ask questions about when we'll have him safely behind bars. Once we have him safely back in Azkaban where he belongs, with the rest of the filth, it's going to stop trouble-stirrers like Rita Skeeter from getting people agitated."

"I see," said Kingsley, while thinking over well-known sayings involving stable-doors, horses, bolting, and the probability of Rita Skeeter surviving and causing trouble even after one of those new-clear explosions that Muggles were so afraid of. "And you want me to go after him?"

"Well, you'll be one of a team of hand-picked Aurors, of course. It's not something which we would expect you to carry out by yourself," Fudge said with a little chuckle that Kingsley was sure the man would have liked to characterise as jovial. "But you would be leading the investigation. Just as much independence as your department normally has, naturally' though there are one or two suggestions that I might make to you"

When Kingsley left the office half an hour later, the pressure at the back of his eyes was well on its way to becoming a full blown headache. He took the Floo from the Ministry offices back to his small room in the old, old building which served as the Auror headquarters. He sat down at the desk, behind the mounds of paperwork which as a Senior Auror, he was supposed to file regularly, which he rarely had the time to do, and which his head of department rarely bothered reading in any case.

He sat quietly in the darkened room for a few minutes. He thought of the long years that he had known James Potter and Lily Evans, and the longer years he had spent working as an Auror' he thought of his mother and her smile, of Fudge and his' he thought of how his head pounded and his palms itched the longer he spoke to the Minister. He thought, and thought, and then he thought of nothing in particular for a while. When it got dark enough outside that he could hardly see in front of him, and the building around him was slowly emptying, Kingsley straightened up in his chair. He lit the candles which floated perpetually over his desk, and then Accioed a fresh piece of parchment and a worn old quill.

_Dear Professor Dumbledore_, he wrote, words following on words as what he was writing became easier and what he wanted to say became clearer and that insistent itch behind his eyeballs faded away.

When he opened the window to let his owl fly north to Hogwarts, it was later still and the sky was fully dark. He stood for a while and watched the owl fly until it disappeared into the bruised sky and sodium-white glare of London.

"You trust that itch, boy, if you ever feel it," his mother had said. "It'll help you." Kingsley hoped she was right.

He turned and sat back down at his desk, pulled out a scrap piece of parchment, and began to plan what he would need. He left the window open behind him.


End file.
